How do I change hosting companies?
How do I change hosting companies?
This is a very high level overview! Feel free to print this page out and use it as a checklist. It is very important to track all of the information listed below for your old site and new site. First, before we begin. If you have a friend that knows how to change hosting companies, then I’d suggest you’d ask them for help. There are a lot of small steps required to move your site over to a new hosting company, but, it can be done and is done every day. And, even though that sounds dramatic, it’s not that bad. Small sites can be done within an hour, others may take a day or even longer.
Here is your checklist of items to change hosting companies:
- Domain Name: What is your domain name username and password? You’ll need this to point your domain name to the new hosting company. Please note, it takes about 24-48 hours for the entire
internet to be updated with the new information. - Hosting operating system: What operating system are you using now? Make sure you purchase hosting with the same operating system! If you don’t use the same operating system, your code may not run.
- Programming language: What programming language does your site use? ASP, PHP, .NET, etc. Make sure your new hosting supports it.
- FTP Information: Do you have your old and new ftp address, username and password? You’ll need to have this get a backup copy of your files and to add them to the new site.
- Database information: Do you have access to your old and new databases? What is the type and version? If you want to keep everything in there, you’ll need to create a backup for the new site. Note, you’ll have to create a new database on the new hosting environment where you’ll import your data.
- Email Information: Make sure you keep a list of all the email addresses. Dependent upon your main task, you may need to obtain the usernames and passwords for all email addresses. Also, you’ll need to create a set of instructions for all of your users. If you don’t, everyone is going to call you in a panic looking to get their email!
Effort level
Moving hosting companies is typically not that big of a deal. A lot of the difficulties come from
gathering the information listed above as many people don’t have easy access to this information.
IMPORTANT: Make a list of all the things you change, and create a checklist. Remember, you can use this page as a checklist.
Timing
DO NOT cancel your hosting until your new site is up and running. Make sure you can view your new site before you cancel the old hosting. Why? Well, if you cancel hosting and you’ve forgotten something, you may lose part of your site, or encounter extra costs. Plus, you want to switch hosting when no one is on the site, preferably at night or really early in the morning. This way, if the something goes wrong, you can switch hosting back to the old company until you make any fixes, and no one will know. If you need help changing hosting companies, feel free to let us know!
